Quote

The past exudes legend: one can't make pure clay of time's mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly as it was.Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction.

Bernard Malamud

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Bernard Malamud
Age: 71 †
Born: 1914
Born: April 26
Died: 1986
Died: March 18
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Past
Legend
Make
Biographies
Time
Clay
Life
Legends
Wholly
Exudes
Ultimately
Recaptured
Pure
Biography
Fiction
Mud

More quotes by Bernard Malamud

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You see in others who you are.
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When I don't feel hurt, I hope they bury me.
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I write a book at least three times-once to understand it, the second time to improve the prose, and a third to compel it to say what it still must say.
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... it's possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.
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Charity you can give even when you haven't got.
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There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.
Bernard Malamud
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All men are Jews, though few men know it.
Bernard Malamud
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A writer is a spectator, looking at everything with a highly critical eye.
Bernard Malamud
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Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
Bernard Malamud
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As long as a man stays alive he can't tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.
Bernard Malamud
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Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.
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The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime
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Space plus whatever you feel equals more whatever you feel, marvelous for happiness, God save you otherwise.
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Ithink Isaid'All menare Jews excepttheydon't know it.'I doubt I expected anyone to take the statement literally. But I think it's an understandable statement and a metaphoric way of indicating how history, sooner or later, treats all men.
Bernard Malamud
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The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
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I don't think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.
Bernard Malamud
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It was all those biographies in me yelling, 'We want out. We want to tell you what we've done to you.'
Bernard Malamud
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The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.
Bernard Malamud
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What suffering has taught me is the uselessness of suffering.
Bernard Malamud
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Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
Bernard Malamud